Over half of reported GOP picks for House riot committee voted to overturn election

A majority of the Republican lawmakers House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is reportedly considering for the select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol voted to block certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Punchbowl News reported on Friday that McCarthy is considering 10 possible Republicans to appoint to the five spots Republicans were given on the investigative committee.

They are: Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mike Johnson (R-LA), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Jim Banks (R-IN), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Brian Steil (R-WI), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Jackie Walorski (R-IN), John Rutherford (R-FL), and Troy Nehls (R-TX).

Six of those 10 — Johnson, Banks, Stefanik, Walorski, Rutherford, and Nehls — voted to block certification of Biden’s win, even after the mob of Donald Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol in their effort to stop the peaceful transition of power.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the power to nix any of McCarthy’s picks. It’s the same power then-Speaker John Boehner had when the GOP created a select committee to investigate the 2012 terrorist attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

And Pelosi has said she will use that power if she believes McCarthy’s picks are out of bounds.

“We’ll see who they nominate,” Pelosi told CNN ahead of the vote to create the select committee, though she would not say whether she would definitively block Republicans who voted to overturn the election from serving.

McCarthy has not said publicly who he wants to appoint to the select committee.

“When I have news on that, I’ll give it to you,” McCarthy said Thursday at a news conference on whether he planned to appoint anyone to the committee at all.

CNN reported, however, that few Republicans want to be one of the five GOP lawmakers on the committee.

And the Republicans who have said publicly they want to serve — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — would likely be untenable to Democrats.

McCarthy also threatened Republican lawmakers with the possibility of losing their committee assignments if they accepted an appointment to the committee from Pelosi.

But Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) — who has been a vocal critic of members of her own party who downplay the insurrection and who blocked an investigation into it — accepted Pelosi’s appointment to the committee.

She did so even after McCarthy’s threat became public, and suggested she was unmoved by his warning.

“I’m honored to serve on the January 6th select committee,” Cheney tweeted Thursday. “Our oath to the Constitution must be above partisan politics.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.